1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for reading an image in accordance with a read instruction issued from an information processing apparatus, and transmitting the read image data to the information processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, inexpensive scanners and MFPs (multi-function peripheral having a reading, printing and facsimile function and the like) use the pseudo Push Scan scheme (a method which uses a host PC and a driver) to transmit a scanned image. In the pseudo Push Scan scheme, a request to “execute a Pull Scan by itself” is issued from an MFP to a host PC with a Pull Scan driver installed on it. Then, the MFP reads a document in accordance with a Pull Scan instruction from the host PC, and transmits the image data obtained by reading to the host PC. The host PC processes the image data received from the MFP by a Pull Scan performed at that time, based on an image processing method designated in the Pull Scan, and stores the processed data at a predetermined storage destination. With these procedures, image data can be transmitted from the MFP to the host PC and stored in a desired image format in accordance with an instruction from the MFP, thus implementing a Push Scan from the MFP in a pseudo manner.
In contrast to an MFP which performs a Push Scan on a stand-alone basis, the above-described pseudo Push Scan scheme offers advantages that:
it is possible to reduce the cost because the MFP need not support many protocols,
it is possible to improve the usability because the MFP need not perform complicated network settings.
Also, to execute the pseudo Push Scan from the MFP, the user performs an operation of selecting a desired one of options corresponding to the name of a host PC displayed on a console panel of the MFP and a scan parameter set (to be referred to as a profile hereinafter) of the host PC. On the other hand, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-75692 proposes a technique which can register a shortcut function for omitting the operation of the MFP.
To omit an operation in a pseudo Push Scan, which uses the console panel of the MFP mentioned above, it is desirable to issue an instruction to perform the pseudo Push Scan by a shortcut key, but this poses the following problems.
A host PC with a Pull Scan driver installed on it is often connected to the MFP via a network or an interface such as a USB interface. In this case, the user of the MFP must select both a host PC for each interface and a profile for the selected host PC, thus degrading the usability. Also, omission of an operation of selecting a host PC results in, for example, erroneous transmission. Especially a user who always selects the same host PC wants to omit both an operation of selecting a host PC for each interface and an operation of selecting a profile.